VL Borovikovsky has portraits that give an accurate and vivid description of the model. Here is an image of a woman dressed elegantly in the late eighteenth century. Magnificently written out the texture of pearl jewelry and silk – white, blue, light red. In the face you can see the mind, will, self-confidence. This Elizabeth Temkin – the daughter of GA Potemkin and Catherine II. Contemporaries found that she looked like her father.
For a number of historical evidences, Prince GA Potemkin-Tavrichesky and Empress Catherine II were secretly crowned. July 13, 1775 in Moscow, the Empress, who was then forty-six years old, gave birth to a daughter. The girl was named Elizaveta, by patronymic – Grigorievna, by the name – Temkina.
The girl was born secretly, the circumstances of her birth were known only to a narrow circle of associates. For all the others, the Empress had an upset stomach due to unwashed fruit. The birth took place in Moscow, in the Prechisten palace, during the celebration of the Kyuchuk-Kainarzhinsky world, which ended the First Russian-Turkish War. The child G. Potemkin took to his sister Marya Alexandrovna Samoilova, the guardian of the girl was appointed his nephew Alexander Samoilov.
Later, in the 1780s, the educators of Elizaveta Temkina was identified with the medical doctor Ivan Filippovich Beck, who treated the grandchildren of Catherine II. Then the child was sent to a boarding school. Ye. G. Temkina from childhood knew the secret of her origin. In the province of Kherson, huge estates were granted to her. Already after the death of his father in 1794, the Empress’s daughter married the second Major Ivan Khristoforovich Kalageorga, a Greek by birth, the childhood friend of the son of Paul I, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich. The plans of Catherine and Prince Tauride included the restoration of an independent Greek state, whose ruler the Empress wanted to see her grandson Constantine. Therefore, to teach the Greek language, he was surrounded by Greek children.
Among them was the son of the Greek nobleman Ivan Kalageorgi. The marriage was long and happy. The family had 10 children: 4 sons and 6 daughters. From 1809 to 1816, Kalageorgi served as the Kherson vice-governor. According to contemporaries, it was “a kind person and benefactor” – he did a lot for Kherson. After the release of Ivan Khristoforovich in 1823, the family resigned in Kherson, then near Kiev in the town of Mszhigorka. The great grandson G. A. Temkina and the great grandson G. Potemkin, the well-known literary scholar DN Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky, wrote in his memoirs that the great family of the Kalageorga “lived amicably, cheerfully and noisily, but at the same time very uneasily, expecting from time to time all sorts of troubles and misfortunes. “
Numerous descendants of Empress Catherine II and Prince Tavrichesky in the XIX century were closely connected with Kherson and Kherson province, where they had huge landed estates. But the stormy events of the 20th century scattered them all over the world – to Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Washington and other cities of the world.
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